Angelus Novus Foundation for the Study of Arts, History and Thought

Mission | 

The Foundation is a non-profit organization that aims at becoming a center for studies and debates with an interest in the dissemination, promotion and understanding of the figure and work of Walter Benjamin and of contemporary thought; a center dedicated to the research in arts and humanities, promoting and defending the modernity and ethical values, the European identity and the culture of peace in today's society, a space that from the culture vindicates historical memory, democratic values and humans rights and has Portbou as a historical border and exile site that contributes to the promotion of its historical, cultural and landscape heritage. The name Angelus Novus comes from the title of a watercolor by Paul Klee from 1920 that Walter Benjamin acquired one year later, and where he sees "the angel of history" that he describes in Thesis IX of Theses on the concept of History (1940). A year later, he had envisioned the name "Angelus Novus" as the header of a magazine that did not see the light.

 

Purpose  | 

Promote the "Walter Benjamin House" in Portbou, a reference center of European and international vocation for the research on arts, history, thought, historical and democratic memory, exile through publications, residences, seminars and activities that contribute to the mission and purpose of the Foundation, as well as watching over the Passages / A Walter Benjamin Memorial, by the Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan in Portbou.

 

Statutes | (Descarregar PDF)

Walter Benjamin, 

Photography: Angelus Novus Foundation.

Board Members' bographies

President

Maria Pilar Parcerisas i Colomer

Maria Pilar Parcerisas i Colomer / President

Art critic, essayist and writer. PhD in Art History and Graduate in Information Sciences. Co-founder of the Region 7 newspaper, she has published numerous texts on art in books and catalogues. She curated more than fifty art exhibitions and wrote screenplays for the movies. She published the memoir Equipatge de mà [Hand Luggage] (1997) and a compilation of poems in Falç i estrelles [Falz and stars] (2020). As an essayist in the field of art history she published Conceptualism(s). Poetic, political, peripheral. Around art Conceptual in Spain, 1964-1980... (2007), Art & co. The machine of art (2003), Barcelona Art-Zona (2007) and Duchamp in Spain (2009). President of the Catalan Association of Art Critics (2007-2020) and member of the National Council for Culture and the Arts (2009-2019). She wrote scripts for the cinema, among them the film The Last Frontier (1992) about Walter Benjamin, subject in what she is an expert. In 2014 she created the Passages of Contemporary Culture Association in Portbou. Since 2016 she has directed and organized the Walter Benjamin Summer School, multidisciplinary seminar held in Portbou to commemorate Benjamin's death. In 2014 she organized the return of Dani Karavan, author of the Passages Memorial in Portbou and the esplanade of the port was named with his name. She promoted the Memorial to be declared a Cultural Asset of National Interest (BCIN) and that the building of the future Walter Benjamin House a Cultural Asset of Local Interest (BCIL).

 

Vice president

Robert Fàbregas i Ripoll

Robert Fàbregas Coll / Vice president
Writer, Editor and Cultural Manager. he holds a Diploma in Social Education from the University of Girona and has carried out two Postgraduates in Contemporary Culture at the Open University of Catalonia. Responsible for cultural activities to young people in several towns of the area Pla de l’Estany (Catalonia) and, since 2011, Director of Les Bernardes - Space for Contemporary Culture of the Diputació de Girona. As a writer he published Èol o la vida del vent [Eolo or life in the wind] (2015), Les Banyes de Capricorni [ The horns of Capricorn] (2016) and En un grapat de lluna  [ In a handful of Moon] (2017), all of them by El Cep i la Nansa Editions, El mar de l’Est [The Eastern sea] in Rupes Nigra Editions in 2018 and the following year published the translation into Spanish El mar del Este, Carambuco Editions. In 2021, El somni de l’astrònom [The Dream of the Astronomer] was published in Edicions del Reremús and, the following year, Hikikomori. Escrits des del refugi. [Hikikomori. Writings from the Refuge] a El Cep i la Nansa editions. He created Les Edicions Reremús at Salt.

Secretary

Josep Maria Casacuberta i Suñer

Josep Maria Casacuberta i Suñer / Secretary

CSIC scientific researcher at the Center for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG). PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology fat the UAB, he was Professor at the University of Paris 7, in France, and Visiting professor at the Universities of Sao Paulo, in Brazil, and Minnesota, in the USA, and has worked as a scientific expert for the European Food Safety Authority, EFSA. In collaboration with José Casanova he carried out several photographic projects, such as "How do we read", exhibited in the bookstore La Memoria (Barcelona) in 2015, “La Massane” exhibited at the Revela’t festival (Barcelona) in 2019, at the Torcatis bookstore in Perpignan in 2021 and the Sala Walter Benjamin, in Portbou, in 2022, among other locations, and Confinament [Lockdown], the photos travel, exposed at the Ateneu Santcugatenc (Sant Cugat), in 2022.

 

Members

Carles Duarte i Montserrat

Carles Duarte i Montserrat / Member

Writer, linguist and cultural and educational manager. His literary work has been translated into several languages and distinguished with the Prize of the Catalan Critics and the magazine Serra d’Or Critics Award. Disciple of Joan Coromines and Antoni M. Badia Margarit, is the author, with Àlex Alsina, of a Historical Grammar of Catalan. He has been secretary general of the Presidency of the Generalitat, director and President of the Carulla Foundation and President of the National Council of Culture and the Arts. He is general director of the CIC Cultural Institution. He has received the Cross of Saint George and is a Knight of Arts and Letters of the French Republic.

 

Members

Genara de Sert Arnús

Genara de Sert Arnús/ Member

Ph.D. in Philosophy, cultural consultant and editor. She took undergraduate seminars in Philosophy at the University of Konstanz and the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, in Germany, and received her doctorate at the University of Barcelona with a thesis on the aesthetics of Theodor W. Adorno, a disciple of Walter Benjamin. She has worked as an editorial technician at Muchnik Editores and at Geoplaneta Editorial of the Planeta Group. She has been a teacher at the Escola Lliure El Sol, and a member of the editorial staff of the Espai de Llibertat magazine of the Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia Foundation, and later a collaborating professor in the Social Education Degree at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. She is a member of the board of trustees of the Sert Foundation for the rehabilitation of children with disabilities. She is co-founder of Art & Law Consultants, a consulting and project management company in the cultural sector, as well as of the publishing house Art & Law (El dret a l’art), focused on art and philosophy with the collections Compás de Espera Cuaderno de Arte and Compás de Espera Libros, respectively. She has published “El concepto de autonomía del arte en Theodor W. Adorno” and “Arte y Libertad”, both in 2023. Since 2025 she has been a member of ACCA, the Catalan Association of Art Criticism.

 

Members

Francesca Llopis Planas

Francesca Llopis Planas / Member

Visual artist who has developed a multidisciplinary work based on the language of painting and video. She has developed a creative work guided by a total freedom of thought and action, with a critical basis. She trained at the Eina School, a focus of the artistic avant-garde of the 70s in Barcelona. She belongs to the generation of artists that strongly imposed itself in the 80s, within the currents influenced by German neo-expressionism and North American abstract expressionism. She has worked in the field of interior design and has carried out artistic residencies in Warsaw, Rome and Nîmes. She has exhibited and made interventions in the Maeght, Montenegro, Eude galleries, the Picasso Museum, the Espaí Metrònom in Barcelona and recently, she presented a video installation at the Arts Santa Mònica and the MNAC, among others. She has stood out in the field of video installation and performance. She has worked frequently in Germany, especially in Hamburg and, above all, in Japan, with works such as Dealers of Memory (2015). Her artist books stand out. She claims the role of women in art and historical memory within the framework of a certain humanism. An example of this is the intervention Llum (Light), with neon and glass, at the Montjuïc Castle in Barcelona. She collaborates with other sound artists such as Barbara Held and Robert Wyatt-Ellidge.